


Do You (Run When It's Just Getting Good)

by VIII_XIII



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Inception Reverse Big Bang Challenge, M/M, Post-Inception, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:25:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2605139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VIII_XIII/pseuds/VIII_XIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a time when Eames thought he knew what to make of Arthur, but that was a time when they were both young and stupid. Or at least younger and somewhat more stupid. Now Eames knows better than to think he knows anyone at all, but especially Arthur, and most of the time he wishes that he also knew better than to let Arthur do the things that he does.</p><p>The things that Arthur does go something like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You (Run When It's Just Getting Good)

There was a time when Eames and Arthur were constantly at each other’s throats, always under each other’s skin. But that was a time before Eames came to appreciate Arthur’s stubbornness and attention to detail, and Arthur came to grudgingly value Eames’s creativity and pride in his work. Now they work almost seamlessly together, their differences complementary, their arguments resulting in better ideas rather than sour moods and fuming. Now one of the few remaining things about Arthur that really drives Eames crazy is his hair, and the way it’s perfect literally all of the time.

Which wasn’t something Eames really minded for the first four or five years of their acquaintance, but it really starts to drive him up a wall after the Fischer job. And not just because they start to see each other regularly after Cobb’s retirement; it’s more about how they’re seeing each other.

Because here’s the thing: Eames is a man who believes in taking the bad with the good. He’s lived in places where aspects of his own existence were outlawed, just because the weather and the scenery were ideal. That’s what he calls pragmatism, because nowhere, nothing, and no one are perfect. So perhaps it’s a little petty that he could find real fault with something like the sight of Arthur riding his cock.

Arthur naked except for his rumpled, tailored dress shirt hanging open and half off his shoulders; Arthur with his head thrown back, his hard, compact thighs working on either side of Eames’s hips; Arthur running his hands all over Eames’s body, all over his own body when he catches Eames looking; Arthur taking Eames’s cock like he was made for it. Arthur, sweat running in rivulets down his chest, breath coming in pants and gasps. Arthur, not a hair out of place.

Eames reaches up, with the half-formed, delirious thought of messing up Arthur’s hair. Pulling it, even. But his hand never gets there; Arthur grabs hold of it, immediately slaps it down and guides it to his own hip. He’s particular about that sometimes, where Eames should touch him and when. And Eames, Eames is weak. Any man would be, with an arse like Arthur’s tight around his cock, so who could blame him for acquiescing? He lets Arthur have his way, and in return Arthur jerks himself to climax atop Eames, and Eames gets a chest full of hot, white cum and an up close view of Arthur fucking his own hand the way he’d fuck Eames, if Arthur ever wanted to fuck Eames.

And that, well. That’s a fair trade.

When Eames awakens in the morning, Arthur is already emerging from the bathroom, showered and dressed in the button-down and leather jacket that seem to somehow pass for casual in his world. He runs a comb through his hair, not even having to look in a mirror to train it back in just the way he prefers.

When he lifts his arm to smooth back a stray lock over his ear, there’s the glint of a silver watch under the cuff of his shirt. Arthur only wears a watch on days that he’s traveling. He likes to set the time zone manually, doesn’t like to dig around for his mobile when he’s got a bag in each hand.

“You have a flight,” Eames says without sitting up.

“Going home,” Arthur tells him. “To see my mom. It’s her birthday this week.”

Arthur is north of thirty now, and he still uses the word _home_ the way university students do, Eames notices. Not the place he lives, but the place where his parent lives.

He thinks then that Arthur should take him home, if that’s really where he’s going. Eames would charm the socks off of Arthur’s family. Really make them feel like Arthur’s doing all right, even though Eames isn’t actually sure of that himself.

But he doesn’t say any of that. Instead he says, “Say hi to your mum for me.”

And maybe he means it to be snide, but Arthur just replies, “I always do.”

There was a time when Eames thought he knew what to make of Arthur, but that was a time when they were both young and stupid. Or at least younger and somewhat more stupid. Now Eames knows better than to think he knows anyone at all, but especially Arthur, and most of the time he wishes that he also knew better than to let Arthur do the things that he does.

The things that Arthur does go something like this:

They start with dinner. Not every time, but in a broad sense that’s where it all begins. The first time, there’s dinner. Eames is bringing Arthur all of his files pertaining to the job they’ve just finished; Arthur will destroy them in the morning while Eames catches a flight to Berlin to do a job for an extractor Arthur hates and won’t work with. Eames doesn’t like the guy either, but he owes him a favor, and not an insubstantial one.

“That’s exactly why I don’t ask people for favors; so I don’t have to do one in return,” Arthur had told him when he found out.

“I like to live dangerously,” Eames had replied. “It’s fun.”

To which Arthur had scoffed and said, “Good for you, but some of us have to worry about people other than ourselves.”

But he’s in less of a terrible mood when Eames arrives at his hotel room and he answers the door. Instead of angry or annoyed at having to do the clean-up on this job by himself, Arthur is simply… inscrutable. And not in the forced, awkward way he’d been when they first met and Arthur was Dom Cobb’s insecure little glorified gofer. An effortless sort of unreadability is Arthur’s default these days.

“Thanks,” Arthur says as he takes the armful of papers and moves to put them on top of a stack already sitting by the television. Eames looks around the room. It’s not a wreck, but it’s not as neat as Arthur’s personal appearance, thought processes, or handwriting. On the small dining table near the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city, there are a few covered dishes from room service. They smell incredible, so much so that it takes Eames a moment to notice that there are two place settings.

“I was hungry and I knew you’d be coming by, so I thought I’d see if you wanted dinner,” Arthur says unexpectedly, and Eames is shocked that Arthur bothered, but he’s certainly not one to turn down a free meal.

Arthur talks business while they eat. Eames doesn’t mind. Sometimes he wishes that Arthur would let it slip that he saw a movie recently, or read a good book, or even that he follows some sort of sport. But tonight Arthur talks about a potential client in Seattle, about the people he’s considering for the job, and about when he’d need Eames to be in the States for it. And right now, about to leave for the first job he’s done without Arthur in nearly a year, this is exactly what Eames wants to think about over braised salmon and pinot noir.

“So you think you’ll be done in time,” Arthur says at last. It’s only a question because one of his eyebrows is just slightly raised.

“Martel promised me three weeks at most,” Eames replies. He thinks it goes without saying that if the job goes much longer than that, the odds of him walking will grow exponentially by the day, favor be damned.

But something about his answer doesn’t seem to fully satisfy Arthur, who’s just staring rather blankly at him. Now it’s Eames’s turn to raise an eyebrow, and at last Arthur asks, “What time is your flight?”

“About half eleven. Why?”

The answer to that question comes in the form of Arthur getting up from the table and rounding over to Eames’s side of it. Eames just stares for a moment, and then just when he opens his mouth to ask what Arthur’s doing, Arthur slides one leg over Eames’s thighs and lowers himself straight into his lap. He watches Eames’s expression as he settles there, atop Eames’s groin, against his chest, and Eames knows he must look absolutely stupid, but for once he can’t come up with anything to say. He never really knows what to say to Arthur, but never before has he let that stop him because never before would it have been so absolutely, shatteringly disastrous if he said the wrong thing.

But he’s saved from having to speak after a few seconds that only seem interminable. Arthur reaches up to his own tie – and yes, this is actually happening, Eames realizes with a twist of his stomach and a distinct pickup in the pace and intensity of his heartbeat. The way Arthur keeps his sleeves rolled up and his lithe forearms exposed makes his hands and fingers seem impossibly long as they work open the half Windsor knot, and Eames should not be so transfixed by something so mundane.

The tie comes loose, and Arthur starts on the buttons of his shirt, one by one, until he gets down to his vest, and he pauses. Eames is getting hard, his cock beginning to grow and dig into Arthur’s arse, and yet he’s sitting there transfixed, his hands resting stupidly on Arthur’s knees, like he can’t think of anywhere else to put them when the truth is that he can think of a thousand other places to put them, wants to put them everywhere Arthur has to offer, except that he’s still not sure exactly what’s on offer.

Arthur’s gaze never leaves Eames’s face as he takes Eames’s hands in his own and raises them to his neck, to the place where it meets his shoulders, and lays them there, palms over Arthur’s collarbones and fingers spread over smooth skin. One of Eames’s thumbs dips into the hollow at the base of Arthur’s throat, just where the knot of his tie rested until a minute before, and beneath his fingers he can feel Arthur’s pulse, his heart pounding away.

When his hands move, sliding further under Arthur’s shirt, Arthur responds by rolling his hips, grinding down just so on Eames’s growing erection. And Eames, for his part, can barely believe that this is happening, Arthur straddling him and stripping, pulling off his own vest before tugging the hem of his open shirt free of his waistband. He wants to ask why now, after years of Arthur pretending not to notice that Eames was flirting with him. But he won’t ask. He doesn’t want to ruin it; this feels as fragile as a dream, though he knows it isn’t because he can remember the hour, the day, the week and month and all the years that have led him here.

And as Eames runs his hands over Arthur’s chest, his abs, his slender hips, Arthur moves on him like this is a proper lap dance, right down to the way he schools his expression and tries to seem like he’s not all that affected. He is, though; he’s hard as well, the bulge of his cock pressing against Eames’s stomach with every little thrust of his hips.

It’s only when Eames can’t bear it any longer and begins to try to pull up his own shirt that Arthur kisses him. The action is unexpected but not unwelcome. All at once Arthur’s lips are on Eames’s, hot and slick and demanding, and Eames’s whole body is awash in heat, his cock throbbing in the confines of his trousers. He forgets about his clothes; the hand that had been working on his shirt moves to Arthur’s inner thigh, then up to the rather impressive bulge in the front of his pinstriped slacks, and Arthur moans and drives his tongue into Eames’s mouth.

And Eames, well. Eames is lost after that. It’s Arthur who eventually pulls his shirt off over his head, to make way for hands that roam appreciatively over Eames’s body, rubbing his nipples to hardness, followed by Arthur’s mouth when he finally allows Eames to come up for air.

Then, all at once, Arthur’s weight is gone. Eames sighs with the loss, but he can’t really protest because Arthur is licking a trail down his chest and his stomach, stopping to nip and bruise his skin, and then Arthur lands on his knees and looks up at Eames. He grabs the legs of his chair and shoves it back so it skids across the floor until the back of it hits the window.

Having given himself room to work without having to duck under the table, Arthur crawls forward after Eames and pushes his thighs open, then palms the bulge of his erection, massaging it slowly. He pauses after a moment, but only to tear his own shirt off the rest of the way. He pulls open Eames’s fly then, and finds the head of Eames’s cock already red and glistening with precum, pinned to his stomach but peeking out from beneath the waistband of his briefs.

And Eames can only watch slackjawed and moan helplessly as Arthur immediately dives in and begins licking and kissing up the concealed length of his shaft, the heat and moisture of his mouth seeping into the fabric of his underwear, until he gets to the head and seals that obscene mouth of his over it, and Eames swears loudly and lets his head drop back with a heavy _thunk_ against the cool glass of the window behind him.

Arthur sucks cock like he can’t survive without it. He drags Eames’s underwear down and alternates between pulling back to play with Eames’s foreskin with the tip of his tongue and sliding Eames’s cock so far into his mouth that the tip nudges the back of his throat. He moans with it, like he can’t get enough, and it’s so good and so consuming that when Arthur pulls off entirely and leaves Eames dripping wet and throbbing with need, it’s a shock that has Eames nearly following Arthur down onto the floor to find his mouth, a hand, a place to rut against him, _anything_.

But Arthur is kneeling there with swollen, spit-slick lips, staring at Eames while he quickly, efficiently yanks open his own belt. After that, his fly, and then Arthur rises to his feet and slips both trousers and underwear down over the firm, perfect swell of his arse and lets them drop to the floor.

Eames can feel Arthur’s gaze burning into him as he stares, transfixed by the sight of Arthur’s long, elegantly curved cock. Size isn’t a big deal to Eames, but he thinks just then that Arthur’s dick is as perfect as damn near everything else about him, and he wonders for the dozenth time why this is happening to him and why now. What benevolent deity did he inadvertently please?

“Get comfortable,” Arthur orders, and Eames almost doesn’t understand what he means, except that Arthur glances over toward the bed, then turns and heads toward the suitcase on the luggage rack by the door, and Eames isn’t even entirely sure how he manages to stand, much less actually make it over to the bed, without collapsing.

It takes a little while for Arthur to actually find what he’s looking for in his suitcase, and the temptation is there to assume that means that he didn’t really plan this ahead, but Eames knows that it might equally well mean that Arthur simply didn’t want Eames to know that he planned this ahead. And it doesn’t matter, so he doesn’t ask, for the same reason he doesn’t ask why Arthur has suddenly decided to have sex with him or why Arthur chose not to discuss the idea of having sex with him before doing it: because he doesn’t care, and he doesn’t want to ruin this.

“Is that your idea of comfortable?” Arthur asks, and Eames realizes that he’s just been sitting on the edge of the bed, staring stupidly at Arthur’s ass while he was bent over rummaging around. He immediately moves back and lies down. Arthur follows him smoothly, crawling onto him with the same easy confidence he displayed sliding into Eames’s lap in the first place.

“Put this on,” Arthur says, and he drops a condom in a shiny, crisp foil packet right onto Eames’s chest. Eames doesn’t want to seem too eager, and maybe it’s a little late for such concerns, considering he hasn’t put up one iota of protest against anything Arthur has wanted thus far, but it’s never too late to start pretending that you’re not gagging for it, right?

“Need some help with that?” he asks, picking up the condom and casually flipping it over his knuckles. He’s watching Arthur lube up his own fingers, and Arthur raises an eyebrow, then squeezes a little more onto his hand.

“Condom, Mr. Eames,” he reiterates, and now Eames listens, because what else can he do? Arthur sits back obligingly as Eames tears open the wrapper, his thighs spread wide on either side of Eames’s, his reddened cock bobbing there tantalizingly, right in Eames’s line of sight as he unrolls the condom onto his own nearly painful erection. He wants to give himself a few good strokes, relieve the pressure, but he doesn’t. He wants to ask if he can suck Arthur off, just for a bit, but he doesn’t do that either. He can’t remember the last time he exercised this much restraint.

“Yeah,” Arthur breathes as he watches Eames finish putting the condom on, and then he crawls forward, even as he reaches back behind himself. He settles over Eames’s stomach, and Eames can see the way the muscles in his body all tighten at once when Arthur slides his long, deft fingers into himself. It’s beautiful, and Eames unthinkingly reaches out to run his hands up the inside of Arthur’s thighs, over the curve of his hips, back down the outside. He watches as Arthur draws one sharp breath after another, beginning to rock his body and arch just slightly into Eames’s hands each time they find their way up close to his groin.

“I thought you said you wanted to help,” Arthur says after a minute, his voice low and strained.

“I asked if you needed it,” Eames replies. Arthur narrows his eyes slightly, licking his lips.

“Yes,” he murmurs at last, “I need it.” And there’s something about the way he says it and the way he looks at Eames when he does that drives Eames absolutely wild.

Eames pushes himself up until he’s sitting, and he wraps one arm around Arthur’s middle, hauling him close and eliciting a gasp from him as Arthur unexpectedly finds himself off-balance, being held up by Eames with his cock trapped against Eames’s chest.

Grinning up at Arthur, Eames reaches between his legs and finds where he still has two fingers buried deep inside himself, and he teases around the outside with one of his own thick fingertips, feeling how tight Arthur is and the way he tenses further at the threat of a third digit.

Arthur is more than slick enough, though, and he knows it. “Do it,” he whispers.

And that is how Eames ends up finger-fucking Arthur, with Arthur rutting against his chest, his cock leaking precum and every moan bordering on a shout as he clings to Eames’s shoulder for balance with his free hand. He thinks, as he feels Arthur clench around his finger and watches him throw his head back and finally, finally seem to let go in some way, that he needs to commit this to memory, that maybe this is a gift he will never receive again.

He doesn’t like to think about that; he hates the very idea of it. He wants to make this so good for Arthur he won’t be able to stay away if he tries. So he pulls away, and he sinks down, and just as Arthur protests about the change, he slides Arthur’s cock into his mouth without asking, wrapping his lips around that gorgeous, cut tip and lapping up the liquid pooled there. Arthur is salty and earthy and absolutely incredible when he moans low and helpless.

Eames isn’t sure whether Arthur takes his fingers away after that because he’s getting ready to pull back entirely and try to regain control, or if he just can’t stay upright with one hand behind him. Either way, he doesn’t ever find out because he simply slides two more of his own fingers in to make up for it and prepares for Arthur to thrust into his mouth, which Arthur does. And Arthur’s fingers are tight and trembling where they clutch Eames’s shoulders, but Arthur manages to keep a slow, steady rhythm when he begins to move. He pushes back onto Eames’s fingers, then forward in turn, cock nudging the back of Eames’s throat, just this side of becoming too much.

Eames can’t get enough of it.

He keeps thinking Arthur will protest, or tell him to stop, but somehow it doesn’t happen. Maybe Arthur is simply enjoying himself so thoroughly he doesn’t care that Eames is spoiling what seemed to be a fairly neat little well thought-out plan. Eames hopes that’s the case, because he personally enjoys the feel of Arthur in his mouth and clenched around his fingers, spitting profanities whenever Eames does something that feels particularly good. He enjoys it so much that he rather loses track of time, and he has no idea how long it is before Arthur starts to lose control of his movements and Eames realizes that he’s going to come.

He could stop. Maybe he should. But he doesn’t even seriously consider the idea when Arthur tries to get his attention, tries to warn him. Instead of pulling off, Eames just pulls back and wraps his lips tight around the head of Arthur’s cock, and he wraps his other hand around the shaft, and it only takes a few good, tight strokes before Arthur cries out and stiffens and Eames feels a hot wash of thick, salty cum filling his mouth, pooling in the back of his throat. He swallows, and he hopes that the sight of him so fucking eager to drink him down is the hottest thing Arthur can remember seeing.

Arthur certainly looks overwhelmed, at the very least, when Eames lets him go. He’s visibly unsteady, his eyes barely even seeming to focus as he blinks down at Eames. Eames watches as Arthur licks his lips slowly, then swallows with some difficulty.

And then Arthur says, “Come here.” Before Eames can even work out what’s happening, Arthur pulls him down, rolling onto his back and dragging Eames with him, and Eames find himself on top of Arthur, between spread thighs, and Arthur draws his legs up and Christ, Eames doesn’t have it in him to insist that they don’t have to fuck when Arthur is wet and open and so, so easy to slide into.

Arthur looks exhausted and utterly sated, his brown eyes sleepy and half-lidded as he looks up at Eames, and there’s something so incredibly, unexpectedly erotic about the contrast between the way Arthur looks and the way he guides him in and wraps his legs tight around Eames as Eames fills him, and Eames slides into him fully and suddenly he himself can no longer think of anything aside from simply moving.

He moves. He thrusts into Arthur, hips snapping hard and steady as pleasure washes over him in waves, and Arthur just rolls with him like he’s enjoying it every bit as much. He tilts his head back and sighs audibly, and he reaches up to take hold of the headboard with a languorous motion. All this even as he pulls Eames into him, even as he bears down and tightens around Eames so hard Eames worries he won’t be able to keep moving.

But he does, even as he’s carried away, even as he loses himself in the heat of Arthur’s skin and the burn of his own muscles and the rhythmic slap of his hips against the perfect curve of Arthur’s ass. He keeps moving and finally Arthur groans deep in his throat, as though he can’t get enough of Eames inside him even though he’s already been satisfied and his cock is soft between them. That does Eames in. He buries himself in Arthur, impossibly deep, driving him down into the mattress as he tightens everywhere and cries out and comes, and comes, until he’s trembling, until he’s gasping, until Arthur is staring up at him with a little self-satisfied smile curving his lips, his cheeks flushed so beautifully and somehow, even now, not a hair out of place.

Arthur lets Eames stay the night. The next morning, it’s as though Eames isn’t the one with somewhere to be. Arthur is already awake and dressed when Eames gets up. He looks perfect as he says, “I have a rental. I’ll take you to get your bag and drop you at the airport if you want.”

That’s what Arthur does the first time. Eames flies to Germany, unsure of what just happened or if it will ever happen again. He and Arthur don’t call or text, because they never do while one of them is on a job, but Eames thinks of Arthur. Not just while he’s working and wishing that Arthur were there to wrangle the rookie chemist or help him argue out the details of a plan. He thinks of Arthur on the cab rides back to the hotel, while he tries to read a novel he thinks he may never get through, while he eats and showers and sleeps.

The job doesn’t go off perfectly, but Eames manages to hijack it just enough to make sure that it at least goes off. When he arrives in Seattle afterward, Arthur is there at the airport even though Eames never told him what flight he would be on, and that doesn’t anger Eames or even worry him the way it should.

In fact, it’s almost comforting, in exactly the way Arthur’s cool, unreadable expression as he stands there leaning against his rental car outside the baggage claim is not.

“Hello, sunshine,” Eames says. Arthur just opens the boot of the car for his bag.

On the way to the hotel, Arthur tells Eames about the job and which team members are on their way. Eames tries not to think too much. It’s easier if he just listens and hums his agreement, and if he avoids looking at Arthur as much as possible.

Arthur parks his own car when they get to the hotel. He always does. Always calls his own taxis. Always carries his own bags. He tries to play it off like he’s just a very private and particular person, but Eames can see that Arthur is uncomfortable with being waited on, embarrassed by it. It was one of the first things that Eames grew to genuinely like about Arthur, back when they still didn’t get along.

Tonight Arthur drives all the way to the lowest level of the garage, to the back, and parks in the corner. He turns the car off, but he doesn’t move or say a word. Eames finally looks over at him, only to find himself being stared at.

“So,” Arthur says. “How was it? Working without me.”

“Barbaric,” Eames replies, and he means it, and Arthur can certainly tell because his eyes go dark and slightly narrowed with unmistakable pleasure.

“It sounds awful,” he says, and Eames hears the click of Arthur’s seatbelt, followed by his own as Arthur leans over and releases it. Arthur doesn’t even bother to properly leave his seat; he drags Eames in and kisses him hard and open-mouthed, leaning across the center console like they’re teenagers with no better place to do this. Eames feels a strange mixture of relief that Arthur still wants him and anxiety over not knowing how or why it is that Arthur wants him.

But then Arthur reaches over and opens Eames’s pants and pulls his cock out, all with a surprisingly dexterous left hand, and after that Eames doesn’t have the mental fortitude to worry at all.

So it goes. They work jobs in Lima, in Kyoto, in Madrid. They fuck in hotel rooms and warehouses and even once in a dream. Always when Arthur wants to, which is usually before a job or after it and only rarely during. For Eames’s part, he wants Arthur all the time. He never says so when Arthur comes onto him or kisses him or just shows up at his door, but he wants Arthur more than that. He just never asks. Maybe because he’s afraid of Arthur knowing that Eames would have him every single night if he could.

Maybe because he’s afraid of the way sex isn’t even really what he wants out of this.

But it certainly seems to be what Arthur wants. Arthur has his proclivities. He likes to be fucked. He likes it when Eames watches him. He likes to be in control. And Eames is okay with all of that; whatever keeps Arthur happy.

Aside from the sex, though, nothing changes. They work together, and work well. They’re partners. And really, it’s all so mutually beneficial that Eames can’t argue. If they’re going to be so busy and they’re going to see so much of each other and so little of everyone else anyway, why not? Why not have safe, regular sex? Why not when it’s so convenient?

“Would you like to come by my room tonight?” Arthur asks as he packs up the PASIV for the last time in Madrid.

“Why not?” Eames replies, and he thinks for a moment that Arthur might have frowned at that before turning away.

The next day, Arthur gets on a plane back to the States. Eames can’t blame him; it’s his mum’s birthday, after all, and Arthur is a good son. It’s one of the ten thousand things that he and Eames don’t have in common.

They never text each other while one of them is working, but now, for the first time in a while, neither of them is working. Home, for Eames, is sort of in Brussels at the moment. He’s meant to be house-sitting for an old friend who’s currently doing a three stretch in a Latvian penitentiary for reasons Eames doesn’t fully understand because (he thinks) they are mostly digital. But the idea of going back there is not very appealing for a long list of reasons, starting with the weather and ending with the unsatisfactory, too-soft mattresses on every bed in the flat.

So he goes to Vegas. He’s always liked Vegas; it’s where he learned to count cards, and the first place he was ever banned from a gambling establishment, which makes him oddly nostalgic. He likes the people and the tackiness and especially the desert.

But the thing is – and he’s not entirely sure when this happened, exactly – he’s not the same person he was when he first came here, or even the last time he visited, and Vegas feels like an ill-fitting, borrowed jacket when it used to be his favorite tailored sport coat. He cheats at poker and thinks about the way Arthur says that Eames is too talented for shit like scamming casinos. He lays out by the pool at Caesars, enjoying the way the harsh sun beats down on every inch of him, and he can’t stop remembering Arthur telling him that tanning destroys tattoos.

“I thought you hated my tattoos,” Eames had said.

To which Arthur had replied, “I’d hate them more as blurry faded blotches.”

Eames had stared at him until Arthur had looked up from his phone, frowned, and turned away, muttering, “Do what you want.”

Eames curses and leaves the pool. That evening he thinks about how easy it would be to pick someone up. He’s under no obligations. He’s nothing to anyone, just convenient to Arthur. There’s no reason not to enjoy himself on holiday.

He goes out on the Strip, just starts walking and figures he’ll choose a place to pull on the way. After sundown, Vegas is nothing but places to pull; it’ll be easy. He can have his pick.

An hour later, he’s leaning on the balustrade in front of the Bellagio watching the fountains dance to Frank Sinatra. A crumpled bag from the CVS down the block containing a tube of SPF 55 sunscreen and a Snickers bar is clutched in his right hand, and he’s never felt so stupid in his life.

 _In other words, please be true_ , Frank croons. _In other words_. A geyser of water fires off into the air, the sound like a gunshot.

_In other words,_

_I._

_Love._

“Oh, fuck me,” Eames groans.

_You._

Neither of them is working, so a wayward text won’t compromise either of them. At the very least they are business partners, so Eames should be able to send Arthur a simple text message. And yet Eames has never been very good with things like boundaries. He always pushes just a little too far and he never seems able to see his own relationships in the same way he can flawlessly analyze others. Nevertheless, he’s almost positive that Arthur cannot possibly have any reason to react negatively to receiving a text from Eames while he’s home visiting his mum.

On the other hand, a shirtless selfie taken at the poolside complete with pouty lips, sunglasses, and one of the numerous cocktails Eames consumed that afternoon in his hand, accompanied by the message, _Don’t worry your pretty little head, I’ve got loads of sunblock on._ Maybe there’s reason for that to be badly received. Maybe that’s why it’s been a full day since he sent it with no response. He can understand that, sort of.

So, sobered up now, he writes to Arthur, _I didn’t mean to be obnoxious. Sorry if I annoyed you. Hope you’re having a lovely time. Tell your mum your loyal business partner says happy birthday._

Surely – _surely_ – there is no way to read any of that as anything but conciliatory and remorseful and completely inoffensive.

But still no response comes. Another two days go by with nothing from Arthur, not even so much as a simple acknowledgement of receipt, and maybe Arthur is busy but who could possibly be that busy for that long? Eames mulls over the situation, goes to the blackjack tables, counts cards, and stews until he catches the pit boss eyeing him and makes his exit, not much richer and significantly angrier.

That evening he texts Arthur one last time.

_You know, I don’t know what kind of bullshit boundaries you’ve set between us, but if they’re going to include me sucking your dick but exclude replying to a bloody text, count me out. I’m tired of wondering what the hell is going on between us, but now that I’m beginning to figure it out I don’t think I like what I’m finding. You can’t have a friend with benefits who isn’t actually your friend, Arthur. I wish you all the best but I think that maybe you and I should work with other people._

And yes, maybe it could be considered an overreaction. Eames realizes that after he sends it, when he’s feeling sick to his stomach with the thought that maybe this really is it. The end for Eames and the only person in dreamshare – or outside it, for that matter – that he trusts. But on the other hand, it’s not just a few texts without responses. It’s years of flirting without responses followed by months of sex without explanation. It’s the way Arthur thinks he can live his life doing whatever he wants without ever having to discuss it with anyone, including the person he’s doing all the things he wants with. The text that Eames sends has been building up in him, filling him to bursting, since Arthur first crawled into his lap in that hotel room. Maybe even longer than that.

Later that evening, Eames gets so drunk that the following morning he can’t remember how he got back to his hotel room. But at least he’s in his own room, and at least he’s alone – or at least he thinks he is, and when he looks around the room, he sees no signs of anyone else.

But his mobile is there on the night stand, blue light blinking steadily with a missed message.

His head throbs as he leans over to reach for it, and his bleary eyes protest at being forced to deal with the light of the screen, but he reads it anyway.

 _So I’ve had this phone turned off all week_ , the first text from Arthur reads, and that’s all. The next one was sent five minutes later, and it says, _I turned it back on this morning to call you and ask when you want to take another job. But at this point, I think that if you’d like to discuss why I turned the phone off in the first place, you should come see me._

And then there is an address.

At first Eames doesn’t quite know how to react to that. It’s a bit neutral in a way he doesn’t like, and yet. And yet he’s pretty sure that that is Arthur’s address, and that is what gets Eames out of bed.

It’s just after seven that evening when he gets out of a cab on a relatively quiet residential street in what seems to be one of the trendier neighborhoods of Chicago. Arthur’s building is red brick, early twentieth century, and Arthur’s flat is up two flights of creaky, hand-carved wooden stairs located behind a front door that isn’t properly latched when Eames tries it.

By this point, Eames feels much better, at least on a physical level. After a shower this morning and getting cleaned up again in the airport bathroom on arrival, he fancies that he even looks all right. Tired, perhaps, but no longer as though he was just vomiting last night (which he actually is not entirely sure if he was).

He doesn’t allow himself to hesitate when he arrives on the landing before knocking on Arthur’s door, but the moment it opens he wishes that he’d taken a minute to steel himself, because it isn’t Arthur who answers. It’s his mother, and Eames has never met her or even seen a photo, but he knows immediately that that’s who she is. She has Arthur’s eyes and his jawline and precisely his shade of almost-black hair, curly and pulled up neatly atop her head.

Eames takes in her appearance as he does with everyone he meets: thoroughly and immediately. She looks to be in her fifties, thin but with broad, athletic shoulders. Her clothing is inexpensive and practical, but neat, well cared-for, and of classic cuts that don’t ever go out of style. And whereas Arthur meets new people with an impassive air that Eames suspects he doesn’t even realize is intimidating, his mother is friendly and open, even in her confusion at finding a stranger on the doorstep.

“Oh!” she exclaims, followed by a quizzical sort of, “Hello.”

“Um,” Eames says stupidly. He isn’t sure what to do, and he’s about to let whatever springs to mind first just come tumbling foolishly out of his mouth for lack of a better idea when Arthur appears and saves him, sort of.

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” he says in an almost overly warm and casual tone as he appears from around the corner, between his mother and the door. He looks like a different person; he’s got jeans on, and a simple, thin sweater with the sleeves pushed up carelessly, and his hair is down. It’s the first time Eames has ever seen it like this. It’s just a little curly, falling over his forehead and framing his eyes beautifully. Eames is gaping, he realizes, but he can’t quite stop, and once again Arthur covers for him, this time by sliding past his mother and into Eames’s personal space, where he reaches up to pull him in by the back of the neck and greet him with a short, sweet kiss of a sort he’s never even come close to giving him before.

It’s a supremely self-conscious moment for Eames, not because the kiss is different from any other display of affection an average adult would be comfortable with in front of family, but because Arthur’s never displayed affection in front of so much as a passerby on the street, and Eames isn’t even sure if his private displays are really affection or only an illusion of it.

When Arthur pulls back, he’s smiling – as though he’s happy to see Eames, as though everything is not only normal between them, but exponentially _more_ normal than it’s ever been between them before.

“I, ah,” Eames says, but Arthur graciously interrupts.

“Mom,” he says, turning back to her, “This is Connor Eames. He hates his first name; don’t use it. Eames, this is my mother.”

When she smiles, Arthur’s mother has his dimples, and laugh lines around her eyes that Arthur is only beginning to develop, maybe because he almost never laughs. “Call me Laura,” she says as she extends her hand to him. “This is such a lovely surprise; I’m so excited to finally meet you.”

Eames shakes her hand; she has an effortlessly strong grip, and he glances at Arthur at that word, _finally_. How long has Arthur been talking about him?

He can’t ask, and out of his mother’s line of sight, Arthur just stares Eames down, his smile sharpening into something not so very different but altogether more dangerous. “I’ll set another place for dinner,” he says.

The unaskable question of whose home he is, in fact, currently in is answered soon thereafter when Arthur’s mother asks him where he keeps his corkscrew, and yet Eames finds that that’s really become the least of his concerns. Laura is one of those people who loves to talk but prefers the subject of other people to that of herself. Normally Eames enjoys inventing personal histories to give to new acquaintances, but in this case he has no idea what lies Arthur has already told on his behalf.

However, he soon finds that even though Arthur is clearly taking delight in watching Eames’s confusion and discomfort from across the small dining table, he’s not going to let Eames go and ruin the illusion. He only picks at his lasagna – which is obviously homemade and extremely delicious – and smoothly jumps in whenever he seems to have already invented a part of their story. They both, apparently, work for the same corporate consulting firm, Eames in sales and Arthur in IT. They’ve worked together six years and been dating for one. It’s all not so very far from the truth, except that Arthur seems to have told his mother that Eames went to university when the fact of the matter is that while Eames has forged a variety of degrees for himself, in reality he dropped out of secondary school and ran away to London.

“And where are you living now?” Laura asks him eventually. It’s a question that no one asks in his line of work; he can’t remember the last time he had to answer it, and he isn’t even fully sure how. Arthur says nothing, just takes a bite of his food and stares at Eames expectantly.

“Er. Brussels, currently,” he says, and there’s no reason to tell the truth, except that in the back of his mind maybe Arthur will be happier if Eames lies to his mother as little as possible.

“Do the two of you find it difficult?” Laura asks, and Arthur puts his fork down. He’s looking at Eames when he answers.

“A few years ago, Eames told me in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t ‘do’ relationships. I count myself lucky that he’s even come here to visit.”

There is a moment in which time stops for Eames. His jaw drops, and Arthur’s expression stays entirely steady, almost confrontational. Eames remembers the conversation he’s referencing, in a beachfront bar in Brazil four years ago. He was sort of a wanker back then, even more of one than he is now, and he’d told Arthur that because it was true, but it had only been true because he hadn’t been able to picture a life in which a relationship didn’t entail giving up his job or his freedom. Back then he’d been too short-sighted to imagine that there might be a human being who could mean more to him than his job, his freedom, and everything else he’d once thought fulfilled him.

He wants to ask Arthur if that’s it. Is that the reason everything has gone the way it has between them? Is the story of their entire relationship written as it has been because of one stupid, meaningless statement he made half-drunk nearly half a decade ago? He wants to insist that it wasn’t that he thought he was too good for anyone – least of all Arthur – it was just that at the time he didn’t want to care, but it’s too late for that now and he does care, he cares so much that the way they’ve been carrying on is like a knife in his side that he won’t remove because the sharp, constant ache is better than bleeding out.

But he can’t. He can’t because they’re not alone, and he knows that’s why Arthur’s chosen to do it like this, to say it here and now. He wasn’t not expecting Eames like he claimed; he always knows where Eames is. He knows what hotels Eames stays in. He knows what flights Eames takes. He knew Eames would be here tonight.

Across the table, Arthur laughs all of a sudden, as though he’s only teasing Eames. And Eames, always a better actor than he feels, laughs as well for the benefit of Arthur’s mother, who just rolls her eyes good-naturedly as though she knows something about relationships that the two of them, in their relative youth, obviously don’t understand. Eames is sure that she knows a million things about relationships that he doesn’t, but he thinks he’s beginning to realize a few of them.

He glances at Arthur, who’s sitting there secure for the moment in the knowledge that he doesn’t have to have a discussion with Eames about their past or their future just yet, and Eames lets him have that comfort. He looks to Laura and says, “I don’t think you need to worry. I’m not particularly attached to Belgium. I don’t even speak French.”

He smiles, and after a moment she does as well, and Eames decides then that Arthur can play whatever games he likes, but right now the only game Eames himself is concerned with is making Arthur’s mother like him so much she’ll make Arthur’s life hell if he ever tells her they’ve broken up. Within five minutes, he’s managed to bring the conversation around to the story of his parents disowning him, and he knows he’s won.

The rest of the meal is surprisingly pleasant, despite the fact that Arthur seems to have been put a bit off balance, or perhaps because of it. Eames wouldn’t consider himself at ease, per se, by the end of it, but he feels far more confident than he did upon arrival. Laura is easy to impress, or at least Eames finds it easy to do so; she’s the caring mother of a son they both know is far more vulnerable than he’d ever admit, and Eames doesn’t even have to fake his feelings for him. He really would take a bullet for Arthur, and he’s already taken his fair share, so he knows exactly what that would entail.

After dinner, he sits in the living room with a cup of black tea and watches Arthur argue with Laura about how she’s going to get home.

“You’re not driving me anywhere; spend time with your boyfriend. He flew all the way here to see you,” she says, taking Arthur’s jacket from him and hanging it back up on the hook by the door.

Eames smiles behind his cup as Arthur huffs and insists, “A cab, then. I’ll pay.”

“It’ll cost a tenth as much to take the red line. You’re being ridiculous.”

Laura takes Arthur bodily and steers him over toward the living area and Eames. Eames has never seen someone steer Arthur anywhere before; he tried it once, when Arthur was completely plastered and having difficulty navigating the sidewalk, and Arthur laid him out for it.

“I wish you’d let me pay for things. I can afford it,” Arthur says, and for that he’s shoved down into a chair. Laura must spend a serious amount of time in the gym.

“You paid for my condo. I can get myself home to it,” she says, and that’s the end of the discussion, judging from her tone of voice and the way Arthur purses his lips. “Now. I’ll see you boys later.”

Rubbing one temple with his fingertips, Arthur grumbles, “Bye, Mom.”

“Bye, Mum,” Eames echoes, and Laura laughs lightly as she heads out. Arthur just glares halfheartedly at him. “So,” Eames continues once the door clicks shut. “You bought your mother a flat?”

“With my first big paycheck,” Arthur replies in a somewhat defensive tone, as though Eames would think less of him for taking care of his family. “I finished paying it off with the money from the Fischer job.”

“That’s rather nice of you.”

“The neighborhood I grew up in wasn’t safe. I didn’t want her to have to worry about walking home alone anymore.”

“I’m not asking for excuses, Arthur. I mean it; it’s wonderful that you take care of her.”

Arthur looks away, frowning like he’s got a thousand things to say about that that he would never really put to words. That’s something that Eames can understand. Family history is rarely something that could ever be explained. “Was all of that true?” Arthur asks suddenly. “About your family and being disowned?”

“All of it,” Eames replies. He sets his tea down on the coffee table in front of him and waits for Arthur to meet his gaze. “I’m not stupid enough to lie for sympathy points to a person who might be part of my life for some time.”

Going rather still, Arthur blinks at him in confusion, then shifts slowly in his seat. He clearly doesn’t want to say what he’s thinking, so Eames prompts him. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

Arthur scrubs at his face with one hand, then says half into his palm, “To scare you away.”

There’s something in his tone that tells Eames that that’s not the whole story, but he doesn’t push that particular point because he’s too busy wondering what on earth Arthur is talking about. “You decided to try to scare me off by feeding me Italian food and having me meet your perfectly lovely mother?”

Arthur throws his hands up in sudden exasperation and stands. He’s going to pace, Eames realizes. He hates it when Arthur paces; he’s the only person whose agitation makes Eames tense just by witnessing it. “I needed you to see this,” Arthur says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I bought this place and rehabbed it myself. I worked on it for two years, every time Dom and I were between jobs. I got my mom a place in River North so I could see her more often.”

He goes over to the shelves along the wall, stares at the rows of neat books and vinyl records with worn sleeves. He reaches out and straightens a few of them. They don’t need it; nothing needs it. The place is very nice, but hardly looks lived in. “Everyone in dreamshare thinks I’m some kind of robot. I just work and get fitted for suits. Maybe they’re right. Dom and Mal both had this way of just… consuming you. I’m in my thirties now and I haven’t had a real life for almost a decade.”

“What you do is real. Sort of,” Eames says, but Arthur shakes his head.

“What I do is fun, and it pays well, but it’s not for me. It’s for the Cobbs or the client, and what’s mine? Hotel rooms, carryout.”

“It’s a job. What job is for anyone but the client?”

“It’s a job, but I come home maybe three times a year!” Arthur exclaims, turning to face Eames and beginning to get upset that Eames won’t just see what he’s trying to say. “Don’t you get it? I don’t see my family, I can’t even think about starting one of my own. I don’t date. I have hardly any friends. I can’t even get a cat!”

“You like cats?” Eames asks, utterly delighted. Most people pin him for a dog person, but Eames values independence and relative unlikelihood of eating feces as important qualities in a companion.

“It doesn’t matter what I like!”

“No, it _does_ ,” Eames insists, raising his voice just a little. “What do you like?”

“I don’t—”

“No!” Eames cuts him off and stands up to force Arthur to look at him level. “Answer the question. What do you want in your life?”

Arthur sets his jaw as though he’s not going to answer, but after a few moments he says lowly, “A cat. Maybe two.”

“Good. And?”

“And… and I want to buy a car that I’ll have time to drive. I want to go on a road trip to Alaska since no one’s ever gonna send me there for a work. I want to get a membership at the Art Institute. I want to sleep in on weekends because I don’t have to make the most of all the time I have at home before I leave again. I want to not get shot at or have prices on my head. I want to be reasonably sure I’m gonna make it back in one piece when I hug my mom goodbye.” And at that, he cuts himself off, and he looks at Eames with a deep frown lining his face, and then tears his gaze away.

Eames rests his hands on his hips, shrugs, and cocks his head a bit. “All perfectly reasonable.”

“All normal,” Arthur corrects him. He looks absolutely crushed, like he refuses to be ashamed of himself but still sort of wishes he were different somehow. “I brought you here to show you who I am. I’m not James Bond. I don’t get off on danger and jetting all over the world stealing things. Maybe I did at first, kind of, but it’s not who I am and I didn’t choose it. It wasn’t what I applied for.”

Very slowly, Eames raises an eyebrow. “What did you apply for?” he asks, as he realizes that Arthur means that literally.

“Mal’s research assistant. I… I was a grad student. I have joint degrees in art history and library science.”

“Really,” Eames purrs, and he can’t help his tone because he’s about learned as much of substance about Arthur in the last five minutes as he had in the preceding five years, and he rather adores all of what he’s finding out. “So you want the quiet life you would’ve had had the Cobbs not dragged you down into the seedy underbelly of academia, is that it?”

“Yes,” Arthur sighs. “I wouldn’t trade the last ten years for anything. It’s been fun. But deep down inside, I’m still just boring.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

“You’ve _always_ said that.”

“I’ve changed my mind. And I may have been exaggerating in the first place.”

“Damn it, Eames!” Arthur snaps with so much force it stuns Eames into silence. For a moment, Arthur just stands there, his expression a volatile mix of hurt and anger. He closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath, and when he opens them again he speaks in a carefully controlled voice. “I told you if you came here I’d tell you why I had my phone off. It was to stop myself from texting you.”

“You could have just texted me.”

“No. The last thing I need is to start fooling myself into thinking you and I are in some sort of relationship.”

That’s a bit of a punch to the gut. It makes Eames somewhat ill, but not angry. Arthur isn’t trying to be hurtful; he’s trying to be honest. Eames can’t fault him for that. Honesty is rare enough in their line of work. So he responds quietly, “Because I don’t do relationships.”

Arthur purses his lips, and his face softens a bit. He makes his way around the coffee table, prompts Eames to sit down, and then takes the seat alongside him on the sofa. He leaves a good amount of space between them, but it’s still an improvement. “Yeah,” he says, looking at Eames sidelong as he rests his elbows on his knees.

“Then why all the sex?”

“Well, once we got started it was a little hard to stop,” Arthur says somewhat dryly.

“So why start?”

Arthur sighs and sits back, rubbing his hands on his knees. “I’ve thought about that. A lot. And... you were leaving. I didn’t want you to take that job, and the whole thing had me feeling… insecure.”

“I was always going to come back, and in one piece,” Eames tells him as he shifts closer and turns slightly to see Arthur better. “If your goal was to make my desire to do so that much more urgent, you succeeded.”

An almost imperceptible little smile tugs at the corner of Arthur’s mouth. He doesn’t brighten at that, not really, but he can’t seem to help feeling a bit flattered. It’s not much of an opportunity, but it’s the best he’s likely to get, so Eames seizes it in an attempt to change the direction of the conversation. “You know, this is a perfect example of the importance of _talking_ about interpersonal issues.”

“Oh, because you’re so great at that.”

“I feel that I should point out that I made a carefully considered decision after weighing my options at length, and that decision was to remain confused and have sex with you rather than jeopardizing the tenuous but extremely physically gratifying balance of our relationship by questioning you on the matter.”

“Oh,” Arthur says flatly, and even though he’s pretty sure that’s all Arthur is going to dignify his statement with, Eames holds up a hand to keep him from going any further, just in case.

“Of course, eventually the status quo became unsustainable on an emotional level, which leads me to my real point, which is this: there was an occasion when I told you that I do not engage in relationships, and that’s broadly true, or was at the time. But to put a finer point on it, what I really meant was that I don’t seek out people to have relationships with. Date, or put up profiles on personals sites, or whatever it is people do these days. I’ve always valued my independence. I liked my job and doing what I wanted without having to consult anyone else. But the thing that I hadn’t ever really considered at the time was the possibility that eventually, in the course of doing whatever I bloody well pleased, I would come to care for someone so much that independence and unaccountability and even the job would begin to seem irrelevant. And now here I am, in love with you.”

Arthur straightens up, eyes going wide, and blurts out, “What?” It’s not the unequivocally positive reaction Eames was hoping for when he decided at the last minute to just lay all his cards on the table, but it’s also not running away, or vomiting, so it could be worse.

Eames ignores the fact that he himself is trembling with nerves and shrugs one shoulder as if to absolve himself of responsibility for his own feelings. “I know I led you to believe that I prefer casual sex, but I really feel that you should have accounted for the fact that you decided to become my best friend before fucking me. That’s not casual. That’s fucking your best friend. At that point all it takes to fall in love is an ill-timed smile or a particularly romantic moonbeam through the gap in the curtains. Did I really have to tell you it was bloody dangerous business?”

“Are you serious right now?” Arthur asks.

“I’m a liar, but I’m not cruel.”

“No, are you seriously trying to blame me for the fact that you love me?”

“I don’t think that _blame_ is the right word, but…” Only then does Eames realize that Arthur is trying not to smile and mostly failing. It’s a completely foreign look on him, as strange and new as his jeans and the way his hair curls over his forehead. Eames was in trouble before, but right now he’s completely and utterly screwed. “But I’m only human, darling, and you… I don’t know what you are.”

Arthur finally gives up and smiles fully, and that’s about all Eames can take. Sure, Arthur hasn’t said much, but his allowing himself to look happy is a big deal, and he’s completely gorgeous when he smiles, and it finally really hits Eames that he’s missed Arthur terribly even though they were barely apart a fortnight.

Without allowing himself to think about it any further, he reaches over, pulls Arthur in, and kisses him soundly. It’s the first time he’s ever initiated anything between them, and unlike all the scenarios that played out in his head and kept him from trying before, Arthur responds immediately and favorably, grabbing Eames by the shirt and hauling him closer. He kisses Eames until they’re both breathless and Eames is half on top of him, and when they come up for air, Arthur draws a deep breath and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear.

“Eames,” he says, “I’m serious. I want a job that won’t get me arrested. I only want to travel because I want to, to the places I want to go.”

And maybe Eames has achieved some sort of personal enlightenment, because he feels oddly, perfectly calm when Arthur says that. He thinks about his own life as it is right now, and he realizes quite unexpectedly how very easy it would be – will be – to simply let go of all of it. It’s not a choice he expected to have to make when he got in a cab to the airport that morning, but he doesn’t care. Every good thing in his life has been the result of one rash decision or another. He probably should have made a few more rash decisions regarding Arthur a long time ago.

“Traveling for leisure and not getting arrested are two of my favorite activities. And you’re my favorite person. Overall this is sounding incredibly appealing.”

Arthur stares at him for a long moment. Eames gazes back, tilts his chin up as though daring Arthur to question his seriousness again. But Arthur doesn’t seem to feel the need to. He pulls Eames back in and kisses him hot and open-mouthed. Soon Eames is in his lap, pinning Arthur down, and it’s the first time he’s been in this position, and he runs his fingers through Arthur’s soft, gorgeous hair, and he thinks to himself, _Yes_.

Over the following weeks, Arthur asks Eames to go from staying in his flat for the moment to staying in his flat indefinitely, and in return Eames gradually detaches himself from his life outside of Arthur’s flat. He calls his mate in prison and tells him that he’ll have to find someone else to housesit.

“Sorry, it’s just that my mum is terminally ill and needs someone to take care of her.”

“You don’t sound very upset about it,” his friend replies warily.

“Well, she’s not dead yet, is she?” Eames quips, and he hangs up.

He transfers some stray assets into what he’s come to think of as his real name, closes some accounts, cuts up some credit cards he won’t be using and doesn’t see the point in paying off, and jettisons the identities that opened them in the first place. He ties up all the loose ends he can think of. If he’s going to stay in one place, and especially one place with Arthur and Arthur’s loved ones, he doesn’t want anyone unexpected or uninvited knocking at the door. He doesn’t get a job right away because he isn’t sure what he wants to do and is rather ill-prepared for this, but he’s seldom spent much of his money and he has enough of it saved not to hurry. He keeps the house tidy – at least what he thinks is tidy, even though sometimes Arthur informs him that his standards are lax – and thinks about the future, and feels generally pretty good about things.

And Arthur, ah… seems to be finding himself. He gets a job in the art library at a local university, using references that Eames forges for him, and at first he seems very happy. Or rather, he is happy; Eames can tell. It’s obvious that Arthur enjoys coming home and lying on the couch with a book, his head in Eames’s lap while Eames watches TV. There’s no question that Arthur likes sleeping in his own bed and cooking meals in his own kitchen, carefully reading the directions out of one of a stack of cookbooks he owns. And Arthur definitely gets a lot of pleasure from being able to spontaneously say, “I think we should go out,” because he only works from nine to five and not nine to three in the morning like on a dreamshare job, and he has real weekends, and if he wants to go out to a fancy cocktail bar and get terribly drunk on forms of alcohol even Eames has never heard of and fall asleep on Eames while trying to have sex with him afterward, he can do that.

But – and there’s always a _but_ , isn’t there? Especially with Arthur. But gradually, week by week, Arthur’s moods shift. He’s still happy, at least outwardly, but Eames catches him frowning to himself sometimes, or staring at Eames in an odd, pensive way that isn’t the contentedness or affection or uncontrollable lust that Eames would hope for. Eames begins to get the creeping, hard-to-pinpoint feeling that something is off, at least in Arthur’s head, and everyone knows that Arthur’s head is a much more dangerous place than reality.

For Eames, letting himself love Arthur is easy. One might think it would be hard, when Eames did nothing beyond the casual for so long, and was so set on being alone. But it’s not; rather, Eames feels that it’s like a dam bursting, where everything he could have felt for someone but didn’t really want to just comes rushing out at once and flows out of him like a river that’s unfathomably wide and unknowably long.

He doesn’t tell Arthur that, though. What he does tell him, after having maybe a bit too much to drink one Saturday night, is, “Darling, you’re like green eggs and ham.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know. Oh, I don’t want any green eggs and ham, I don’t like it, it just argues with me and insults my taste and intelligence. Only then I try it, and it’s the best, literally the best thing in the whole world, and I’m just going to get absolutely enormous and probably have a heart attack sooner or later but I don’t care because green eggs and ham are just… so bloody wonderful.”

And Arthur buries his face in his hands, but his slender fingers are not enough to completely hide the fact that he’s blushing profusely, and his shoulders shake when he laughs.

On the other hand, Arthur doesn’t tell Eames that he loves him. Eames isn’t sure that he does, and he doesn’t mind if he doesn’t, as long as he might someday. Sometimes he thinks Arthur is going to say it, because of the way Arthur looks at him, or the particular quality of a silence between them while they lie in bed listening to rain on the windowpanes, or the way from time to time Arthur touches him reverently, like he can’t believe he’s even allowed to do so, but it doesn’t happen, and that’s all right. He’s a patient man.

But what he can’t stand is the fact that something’s obviously wrong, and he doesn’t know what it is. It’s like waiting for something very heavy to drop in an incredibly inconvenient or painful spot, and after a while he can’t stand it anymore. “I need to know what’s bothering you,” he says when he’s managed to corner Arthur, and he corners him by catching him in the middle of folding a basket of laundry fresh out of the dryer. He knows Arthur won’t run, because if he leaves the laundry too long it’ll be wrinkled.

“I sort of hate the smell of the fabric softener you bought,” Arthur replies without looking up, and Eames purses his lips and sits down on the bed next to the laundry basket, so that Arthur will really have to work not to look at him.

He picks up one of his own t-shirts and smells it, and he says, “You have something against spring lavender?”

“It reminds me of the nasty potpourri my grandmother always kept in her bathroom,” Arthur says, setting down a pair of folded boxers (and Eames did not know there were people in the world who folded boxers, and he sort of finds it endearing), and he finally makes eye contact with Eames, and Eames can see in his expression that Arthur knows exactly what he’s talking about and is just being difficult.

“I’ll buy something different next time I go to the store,” Eames tells him, and Arthur sighs.

“I don’t want you to. I just… Eames. I work in a library. I’ve started having natural dreams again. I’m sitting here folding your laundry and wondering what you’re going to make for dinner. I’ve been thinking about getting TiVo to record American Horror Story.”

“Is there something we need to free up Wednesday nights for?”

“No, and that’s the problem!” Arthur exclaims.

“You’re bored,” Eames says, and his chest tightens, his stomach sinking. Arthur’s changed his mind.

But Arthur insists, “No, I’m _not_! This is what I’ve wanted for years. I love this. And I don’t care what you do or don’t do, and this isn’t me trying to tell you you’re a deadbeat or you have to get a job, but the fact that you don’t _know_ what you want to do with yourself scares me, because how long is it going to be until _you’re_ tired of my boring bullshit life?”

And there’s the crux of it. Arthur is waiting for Eames to leave, and the pressure that feels like it’s crushing Eames inside lets up a little. He can deal with this problem. All he has to do is never leave.

“That’s an understandable concern,” he says, and he wraps an arm around Arthur’s waist and hauls him down so Arthur is sprawled out sideways, half across Eames’s lap and half across his piles of carefully folded towels and clothes. “But not really something you need to worry about. I don’t measure my self-worth on the length of my criminal record and believe it or not, I prefer the adrenaline rush from fucking you to the adrenaline rush of nearly being apprehended at the border trying to get out of Russia.”

Arthur gives him an annoyed look as his legs knock some of the laundry to the floor, but it quickly softens, and he licks his lips slowly and slides an arm around Eames’s neck for balance. “You’re serious?”

“Of course,” Eames replies, and he leans in and kisses Arthur’s jaw, soft and slow, and he barely lets up when he breathes out against his skin, “I do have things that I’m interested in doing, and I can continue to be happy here. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll prove it.”

“How?” Arthur asks, and Eames can’t help but laugh when Arthur sounds so skeptical about things he knows nothing about. He chuckles against his neck, then licks a stripe up it, stopping to suck on his earlobe a bit.

“It’s a surprise,” he murmurs, and he flips Arthur over and proceeds to knock all the rest of the clean clothes to the floor.

The surprise arrives while he isn’t home. He comes home from the gym on a Friday evening nearly a month later, freshly showered and carrying a pizza, and he rounds the corner into the living room to find Arthur sitting on the couch across from Ariadne. He stops in the doorway and gives her a puzzled frown, and he says, “Ariadne, sweetheart, when I said I needed that item, I meant you could box it up and give it to the postman, not that you had to bring it here yourself.”

“Great, he’s home; now do I get to find out what’s going on?” Arthur asks, throwing his hands up, and Ariadne ignores him.

“What kind of pizza is that?” she asks as she leans over the arm of her chair and unzips a worn leather backpack leaning against the side of it.

Eames moves to sit next to Arthur as she rummages around in her bag, and he replies, “Mushroom.”

“You disgust me,” Ariadne says.

“I won’t tolerate that kind of homophobia in this household,” Eames tells her, and he puts the pizza down on the coffee table between them.

She finally sits back up, flipping her hair over one shoulder to get it out of her face and holding in her right hand exactly the thing that Eames had asked her for the day after Arthur admitted that he was afraid Eames would leave. She offers it to him, and he takes it eagerly.

“Ta,” he says as he sits back, and Arthur’s been sitting there the whole time with his arms crossed over his chest, looking utterly petulant, and that doesn’t really change now, though the furrow to his eyebrows becomes more curious and marginally less annoyed.

“Is that a _rolodex_?” he asks. “Oh, god, it is. You _nerd_. Do you have a pager you’ve been hiding from me, too?”

“You hear that, Ariadne?” Eames asks her, and she glances up at him over the open top of the pizza box, which has somehow migrated to her lap. “The librarian thinks I’m a nerd.”

“You’re both nerds.”

“Remind me whose pizza you’re eating and whose flat this is,” Eames says, but at that moment Arthur takes the rolodex away from him.

“I can’t believe you have one of these and use it. You know they have apps for this, right?”

“You know the company I keep – you _are_ the company I keep – and you think that I’d put this sort of information on a computer?”

“What sort of information is it, even?” Arthur asks, still looking quite puzzled as he flips through the cards. “And where did Ariadne get _your_ rolodex?”

“Out of my storage unit in Pimlico. I paid her to retrieve it, though I didn’t expect her to show up along with it.”

“Did you know how many back issues of _National Geographic_ Eames owns?” Ariadne says around a mouthful of pizza off of which she appears to have picked all of the mushrooms.

“I bought them at an estate sale,” Eames says. “I’m going to read them!”

“What is all this?” Arthur asks, finally looking up from the rolodex and apparently completely unconcerned with how many magazines Eames might be paying to store in overseas lockers.

“I suppose it might be a little difficult to parse when I haven’t added any of the cards from our recent joint ventures yet,” Eames says, taking the rolodex back. “This is all of the people I’ve ever researched, met, or otherwise come across in the course of my work in dreamshare who I thought might be inclined and able to someday pay for services in militarization. I started keeping the list because I thought I might be hard up and short on extraction work one day. That was before we ever met, but I’ve kept adding to it, obviously. And now it’s going to pay off.”

He watches as the surprise registers on Arthur’s face, and he smiles in a way that he knows comes off as terribly self-satisfied, because it is.

“Which is why I’m here,” Ariadne cuts in as Eames, practically humming, puts the rolodex on the table and reaches over to rescue their dinner from her. She leans over to reach into her backpack again and comes up with a manila folder, which she slides across the table toward them.

“What’s that? My fingers are greasy,” Eames says preemptively, just before selecting a slice of pizza and pushing the box over to Arthur, who seems just as surprised to find food in his lap as he was to learn the contents of Eames’s rolodex.

“It’s my résumé.”

Eames raises an eyebrow and says, upon swallowing, “You know you also could have given that to the postman.”

“I wanted to show I’m serious.” 

Finally, Eames leans over and gingerly flips the folder open. Inside is a single sheet of paper upon which is written, _Saved Saito from limbo_ , and, under that, _Types at 110 wpm_. The contact info at the top is Ariadne’s name, her phone number, and an address of, _Wherever you want me to be_.

“Ah, yes, very serious,” Eames says.

“I put what I thought was relevant,” Ariadne says. “I dare you to find someone else who’s equally qualified.”

“That… would be difficult,” Eames admits, and he knows already that she’s as good as hired.

Ariadne excuses herself only a few minutes later; she only got off the plane from London a few hours ago, and her hotel room and jet lag are calling her name, she says. Arthur shows her to the door, and Eames picks up a bit in the living room. He’s on his way to put the leftovers in the fridge when Arthur follows him into the kitchen, grabs the pizza box from him, throws it carelessly onto the counter, and grabs two fistfuls of Eames’s shirt to pull him close. It’s quite startling, all happening in a matter of seconds, but once they’re pressed together, Arthur just stands there, nearly nose to nose with him, breathing softly and unmoving.

Slowly, Eames raises his hands to rest on Arthur’s sides, as though he might startle him by doing so, but Arthur only relaxes his own hands, pressing them flat against Eames’s chest as he stares, transfixed or lost in thought, at Eames’s lips.

“Darling…” Eames murmurs at last, and Arthur’s tongue immediately darts out to wet his lips.

He looks up, then, and he says decisively, “I love you.”

And Eames was sure an hour ago, a week ago, the day he came here that he wants Arthur more than he’s ever wanted anything, but even if he hadn’t been, he’d be sure of it now. He’s going to stay right here, and do his best to get Arthur to say those words as often as he possibly can. He smiles so broadly he knows he must look ridiculous, but there’s absolutely nothing he could do or say outwardly that would reflect the mixture of happiness and relief and reassurance he feels in that moment.

Eames doesn’t miss the way things were before. He liked his life of danger and crime, but he likes waking up next to Arthur each morning and not worrying about where his next job will come from and whether or not he’s going to regret taking it even more. And he couldn’t get enough of Arthur when Arthur was a showy power bottom with a need for control, but he prefers the way things are now.

The way things are now goes something like this:

Eames carries Arthur to the bedroom when their efforts to strip each other, kiss, and get out of the kitchen when they’re not busy with either of those prove terribly inefficient. He falls into bed with Arthur wrapped around him, naked and already panting with arousal. Arthur grunts as he lands on his side, then shoves Eames onto his back and rolls onto him, slipping a thigh between Eames’s and grinding down against him. It’s so much so quickly that it’s nearly painful, but Eames can’t get enough of it, and he bucks up without even thinking about it, until Arthur is practically riding his leg, breaths coming sharp every time Eames pushes up.

“I’m gonna fuck you until you… until…” Arthur purrs, his breath hot under Eames’s ear where Arthur has been kissing him, and Eames smiles to himself as he realizes Arthur doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Arthur is terrible at dirty talk, and Eames loves that about him.

“Until I come, I assume,” Eames rumbles, his amusement evident in his voice.

“Or at least until I do,” Arthur counters, sitting up enough to gaze down at Eames, and he’s smiling as well, and that’s definitely becoming more and more of a regular occurrence. Even more regular than Arthur fucking him, which Arthur doesn’t feel like very often but does extremely well when he gets the urge.

He rolls Eames over soon enough, pushes him down fully onto his stomach and straddles his thighs as he leans over to the nightstand and retrieves the lube and a condom out of the drawer. Eames is expecting Arthur’s fingers, but instead he just gets a hand on his ass, taking hold of one cheek and pulling him open, exposing him. And then, before Eames can ask what Arthur’s planning, he feels a drizzle of cool, slick lube from the base of his spine down to his balls, and Eames moans as it sends chills down each limb and up his neck.

Wordlessly, Arthur drops the lube on the bed beside them and shifts his weight, and Eames can feel Arthur’s heavy, hard cock as Arthur settles it there in the cleft of his ass, slick with even more lube, and Eames shudders with anticipation as Arthur puts more of his weight on him, leaning forward over his back and squeezing his ass with that one hand, nails digging in hard.

This isn’t what Eames was expecting, but he can’t complain as Arthur rides him like that, his cock sliding against Eames’s ass in a mimicry of fucking, a tease that’s carefully chosen to give Arthur a measure of relief and only work Eames up even more. It works; within minutes, Eames is on the verge of begging, his only physical stimulation coming from the way his cock is trapped beneath him, rubbing a little bit against the comforter every time Arthur bears down, and the weight of Arthur on his back and the feel of his wet cock and the way Arthur kisses and bites at his neck and moans out his pleasure drive him absolutely mad.

But just before he allows himself to ask for mercy, Arthur shows it, by lifting his hips and replacing his cock with long, probing fingers that wipe up lube from Eames’s skin and slide into him without hesitation, one at first, eliciting a sigh of relief, and later more, each one drawing a low moan from Eames as he shoves his hips up farther and farther, seeking to let Arthur’s fingers work their way ever deeper.

Arthur moves his attention from Eames’s back and shoulders up to his ear, licking around it, sucking on his earlobe, letting his tongue dip into it a little each time his fingers thrust particularly deep. He knows that it drives Eames crazy, and he’s doing it on purpose because Eames’s cock is hanging there heavy between his legs, and Eames is desperate to touch himself but simply can’t in this position, his arms folded under his head and Arthur’s weight still half on his back.

This is another of those things that have changed. Arthur’s a little more demanding, a lot more of a tease. He doesn’t always give Eames what he wants when he wants it, and Eames loves that too. “Please,” he finally chokes out, and Arthur hums with pleasure and withdraws his fingers. He gives Eames room to lift himself onto his knees properly, but only long enough for Arthur to get the condom on, and then he’s back on top of him, nearly frantic in his movements.

“God, yes,” Eames groans when Arthur pushes into him, filling him completely in just a few short thrusts. For a moment after he bottoms out, he doesn’t move; he just settles himself against Eames’s back once more, his body hot, his skin slick with sweat. It’s one of the first days of summer, and their room is stuffy; Eames thinks that they should probably turn on the air soon, and it’s such a bizarrely domestic sort of thought to have at a time like this, and Eames just laughs, low in his throat.

“You think this is funny?” Arthur rumbles, his breath warm against the side of Eames’s face. One of Arthur’s hands comes up to tangle in his hair, taking hold of a fistful of it and giving a gentle but firm tug to get Eames to lift his head more, and Eames sighs with pleasure.

“Not at all,” he replies. “Terribly sor—ahh!” Arthur draws back and thrusts into him hard, all at once and with no warning, and Eames needs more of that, right this second. “All right, yes, I was absolutely laughing at you…”

“Liar,” Arthur murmurs, and it’s such a peculiar word, one that Arthur only ever seems to use with affection, as though the lies that Eames tells are the reason Arthur loves him. Or maybe, he realizes for the first time just then, Arthur knows and likes that Eames stopped lying – really lying – to him and him alone a long time ago. Before he ever even realized he was doing it.

And then Arthur knocks that fleeting thought right out of his head, driving into him again, and there are no more words after that. Just Arthur’s weight on his back, just Arthur’s cock inside him, just Arthur’s hands alternately clutching at the bed for balance and moving all over him, everywhere Arthur can reach. Arthur loves to touch, like he’s continually forgetting the planes and curves of Eames’s body and needs constant reminders. Eventually both hands make their way down to Eames’s thighs, just stroking heavy along the sensitive skin where his legs meet his hips, in time with every thrust, and it’s such a simple, intimate way of holding him that for Eames it’s almost as good as a hand on his cock.

Eventually, however, he needs exactly that, and Arthur realizes this and sits up. He pushes Eames down and Eames grabs a pillow and buries his face against it, wrapping one arm around it as he reaches between his own legs, closes a tight hand around his erection, and groans with long-overdue relief. After that he’s mindless, jerking himself rather inelegantly, not even in time with Arthur’s steady thrusts. He wants as much as he can get as fast as he can get it, and as Arthur pushes into him harder and deeper with their new position, Eames tightens around him even further.

In response, one of Arthur’s hands leaves his hips and a moment later, scratches a trail down his spine so hard he’s sure to have welts. Eames arches, gasps, and feels his orgasm building. Soon Arthur’s purring, “Come on, baby, I can feel it,” and Eames does come, unthinkingly wrapping his hand over the head of his cock to avoid a mess, gasping and shaking and so overwhelmed that he’s unable to even properly moan until it’s subsiding. And Arthur just keeps pounding into him, half holding him up as Eames goes boneless and takes a moment to regain his balance. It’s another minute before Arthur comes, but he holds Eames through it, one arm around his waist and the other hand soothing his back, rubbing little circles over his skin even as Arthur cries out, and jerks, and shudders atop him before going completely still aside from the feel of one heaving breath after another.

“I can do it,” Arthur complains afterward, his voice throaty and weak as Eames rolls him onto his back. He means going to get a washcloth to clean up. Before, he always did it himself, immediately after finishing, as though Eames would’ve been upset if he got the sheets any messier; now, he’s much less uptight about it.

“And yet you don’t actually have to,” Eames replies as he heads to the bathroom, leaving Arthur to the minimal task of getting the condom off.

He washes his hands and cleans himself off, and when he comes back with a hot, clean cloth, he wipes Arthur down himself, and Arthur trembles either with the temperature contrast or because he’s still oversensitive, or most likely both.

“I don’t love you because you’re going to stay,” Arthur says abruptly as Eames tosses the washcloth into the hamper across the room, and it startles him enough that he misses, and the cloth slides into the corner between the hamper and the wall. Arthur doesn’t even notice, and if Arthur doesn’t notice it’s like it didn’t even happen. Eames looks at him, one eyebrow raised, and Arthur says, “I have for… a while. I was just afraid to tell you before. I don’t want you to think I just… decided. Today. Or something.”

Eames laughs softly, and he leans across Arthur’s stomach and rests his head on his hand, and gives him a fond smile. “I never thought that, darling.”

Arthur nods, trying to look as though he knew that, and after a moment he manages to say, “Yeah. Of course. Good.”

And he’s right.

Eames and Arthur. The little office space Eames rents for himself and Ariadne that becomes too small when Arthur leaves the library to join them. The pair of eight-week-old kittens that Eames brings home from beneath the porch of someone on Craigslist, and the way Arthur locks himself in the bathroom and pretends he’s not crying over them. The little bit of softness about the middle that Eames begins to notice on himself after a few months of Laura leaving baked goods on the counter and pre-made meals in the fridge despite all protests. Arthur is right; things are good.

**Author's Note:**

> Artwork by the very talented Fennegie.


End file.
